Heroin the new middle class, suburban addiction

New research concludes that over the last 50 years, heroin use has changed from an inner-city problem to one that involves primarily white men and women in their late 20s living outside large urban areas.

BROCKTON – When Abington Police Chief David Majenski became a cop 20 years ago, habitual male offenders were the ones most often busted with heroin.

“I remember hardened, older people,” Majenski said.

Today, Majenski sees, instead, a lot of middle-class kids, who start taking prescription painkillers and “before they know it they’re in over their heads.”

“Whether you come from an affluent family or a less fortunate background, it really doesn’t matter,” Majenski said.

The face of heroin addiction has radically changed – a fact that law enforcement officials, treatment experts and families touched by addiction know all too well.

But to date much of that knowledge has been anecdotal, drawn from individual stories, from the composition of Learn to Cope and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and from the testimony of officials who recently placed a renewed focus on battling the state’s opiate epidemic.

In an effort to bring statistical analysis into the national conversation, university researchers compared data from studies completed in the 1970s with patient interviews being performed at more than 150 treatment centers across the United States.

The researchers concluded in a May 28 American Medical Association paper that over the last 50 years “heroin use has changed from an inner-city, minority-centered problem to one that has a more widespread geographical distribution, involving primarily white men and women in their late 20s living outside of large urban areas.”

They also found that whereas 50 years ago heroin was the first opiate experience for 80 percent of people seeking treatment, today 75 percent of patients were introduced to heroin through prescription painkillers.

The findings did not surprise those on the front lines in the Brockton area.

“It definitely didn’t happen overnight,” said Sgt. Scott Allen, an East Bridgewater detective assigned to a regional drug task force. “There’s a broad spectrum. It’s not rich, not poor. It knows no boundaries.”

Allen said he saw changes initially in the early 2000s, with the introduction of OxyContin, a near-pure narcotic pain killer made from oxycodone. Before OxyContin, most pain killers mixed oxycodone with ingredients that prevented their misuse.

OxyContin, which users could crush and snort, brought with it armed pharmacy robberies and for some users a long, slow slide into heroin addiction.

Today the transition happens more quickly, Allen said. Pain killers cost more on the black market than they did 10 years ago, and heroin is cheaper and more plentiful. Several other medications similar to OxyContin also came along.

Page 2 of 2 - Over the last two decades, the Brockton detox facility run by High Point Treatment Center has seen a 6 percent increase in female admissions. It has also seen patients go from 83 percent white to 88 percent white.

In 1995, 48 percent of High Point patients came in reporting heroin as their primary drug and other opiates at 3.4 percent. Last year, those numbers were 73 percent and 5.4 percent.

“A lot of these kids were using prescription drugs before switching over to using heroin,” High Point President Daniel Mumbauer said.

Dr. Rick Herman, head of emergency medicine at Good Samaritan Medical Center, said he hopes the study will have an impact on doctors.

“It’s an eye opener for physicians to be told that the medications that you prescribe in good faith could in fact be causing a wider social problem,” Dr. Herman said

Easton resident John Greene saw these changes first hand.

His 19-year-old son Evan died of a suspected heroin overdose in January, after moving from marijuana and alcohol to painkillers.

Greene said he was clueless about the extent of his son’s drug use. Evan spent a lot of time with his girlfriend and at home would swear he wasn’t high.

“He had me dumbfounded,” Greene said. “At least with alcohol you could smell it on his breath.”